10 Bands Kurt Cobain Loved

And which you might, too

Kurt Cobain always had a complicated relationship with the indie-rock scene. During Nirvana's early days he was a small-town headbanger trying to get in with the big-city cool kids, and then once the band blew up he suddenly became in many countercultural circles the ultimate mainstream sellout. But throughout his career his devotion to underground rock music never wavered, and every time someone turned a camera on him he seemed to be gushing over yet another overlooked indie band on its grind the way he was pre-Nevermind (or at least wearing their t-shirt). He was devoted to this kind of evangelism, and it was appreciated by budding indie rockers stuck in the middle of nowhere in the pre-Internet days who enthusiastically snatched up every record he name-dropped. Here are some of the best acts that he turned us onto.

The Vaselines

When Nevermind exploded in 1991, Edinburgh-based twee-pop group the Vaselines had been broken up for several years, leaving behind a severely obscure legacy based on a couple of incredibly amateurish recordings that had hardly circulated outside of Scotland. Their fortunes reversed immediately after Kurt started using his sudden mega-fame to promote the band (which he repeatedly called his favorite ever) in every way he could think of, including recording electrifying covers of their songs "Molly's Lips" and "Son of a Gun" (which can be found on the outtakes collection Incesticide), doing a jaw-dropping rendition of their "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" for Nirvana's MTV Unplugged, and naming his daughter Frances Bean, after one of the group's primary members.

The Melvins

Once a band received Kurt's blessing they soon found themselves courted by major labels, and since these were the go-go days of the nineties alt-rock bubble there were soon all sorts of aggressively weird and thoroughly uncommercial acts getting signed to mammoth record deals for little more than getting name-dropped in a Nirvana interview. His outspoken admiration for the Melvins led to an experimental metal band with an openly antagonistic relationship with their audience being signed to Atlantic Records, home to Led Zep and Cream, as well as cornball pop-grungesters like Bush and Collective Soul.

Meat Puppets

The Meat Puppets, made up of brothers Curt and Chris Kirkwood, were an obscure footnote in the history of punk — acid-eating, country-loving psych rockers that somehow ended up signed to SST Records, home of Black Flag, in the mid '80s — when Nirvana invited them to sit in on their MTV Unplugged taping for three songs from the Kirkwoods' 1984 album Meat Puppets II. After it aired those heart-wrenching covers of "Lake of Fire," "Plateau," and "Oh, Me" made them bona fide alternative rock stars, a status that they solidified with their 1994 Too High to Die and its catchy single "Backwater."

Bikini Kill

When Bikini Kill front woman Kathleen Hanna spray-painted "Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit" on the wall of Cobain's Olympia, Washington, punk house (a tribute to the deodorant brand worn by his then-girlfriend, Bikini Kill drummer Toby Vail) she presumably had no idea that she was walking straight into the pages of rock history. Not only is Bikini Kill (one of the best bands associated with the Riot Grrrl movement) now intrinsically linked to one of the most important rock songs of all time, but Kurt continued to shout out the band after "Teen Spirit" blew up, at least until he got involved with Hanna's Riot Grrrl rival Courtney Love.

Hole

Of course Courtney was herself one of the biggest beneficiaries of being associated with Kurt. Hole wasn't exactly unknown before the pair hooked up (their 1991 debut Pretty On the Inside was produced by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon), but his enthusiastic televised comments about her sexual talents rocketed her into immediate indie it-girl status and mainstream fame that she's held onto with a pitbull's tenacity ever since.

Sonic Youth

New York noise icons and godparents of indie cool, Sonic Youth gave Nirvana their first real break by taking them out on tour and helping them get signed to DGC Records. When Nevermind blew up soon after, Nirvana returned the favor by publicly gushing over the band and getting a critical number of art-damaged experimental rock records in the hands of budding grunge kids.

The Raincoats

Another painfully obscure disbanded group of twee art-punks from the UK, the Raincoats were probably even less popular than the Vaselines before Kurt came out as a super-fan in the Incesticide liner notes. After that he used his considerable heft at DGC to persuade the label to reissue all three albums the band had recorded before its breakup, which went on to sell as well as you'd expect for records by a ridiculously arcane punk band that wasn't even around anymore.

The Boredoms

In 1993 Kurt hand-picked the Japanese experimental band the Boredoms as the opening act for a handful of U.S. In Utero dates. At the time they were deconstructing hardcore punk down into bursts of screaming and pure noise that were both aesthetically compelling and extremely painful to sit through. Lollapalooza attempting to woo Nirvana into a headlining slot led to the Boredoms being booked for the festival's 1994 tour, where they terrorized arenas full of unsuspecting alt-rock fans.

Beat Happening

Kurt worshipped these Olympia twee-pop pioneers so much that he stick-and-poke tattooed the logo for their DIY record label, K, on his own left forearm. That's what you call an endorsement.

Daniel Johnston

Daniel Johnston, an outsider musician from Texas who suffers from severe schizophrenia and manic depression, is known to a small audience of specialist listeners for his fascinatingly naive pop music. He's known to millions more for the bug-eyed alien that he drew for the cover of his 1983 album, Hi, How Are You?, that later ended up on Kurt's favorite t-shirt of all time.

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